So join me as I explore my own long road, from Maine to Antarctica to the UK, and most things inbetween. This blog is my ramblings from the daily life of a deep-sea biologist living as an alien in the USA, and a way to keep my family and friends in the loop that is my life without filling up everyones mailbox!

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Station G

Lat - 68'08S

Long - 71' 02W

Area - Station G

Water Depth - 598m

AirTemperature - -24.7C

SeaState - Icy and Flat!

We're here, station G. The ice never got really heavy, just large pancakes starting to stick together (i'll have to ask Stian what kind of ice this is), so we didn't have to slow down too much. Adelaide Island in the distance, first set of sampling equipment has gone over and come back with varying success. I got up early for the CTD (collects water) but alas it broke on the way down, so had to come back up again. It pulled away from the wire, so the connection broke a little, nothing major, just a pain to re-terminate the wire and reconnect everything. About a 4hr job that lucky Stian gets to do as he's the only one on here who knows how.....:0)

The megacore went in and came back out with some great mud samples, but the water on the equipment froze solid as soon as it came up, making the cores almost impossible to get off. They had to pout hot water over them to get them free, and now that they are free they are solid blocks of ice, making them really hard to extrude the mud from (it's a long (~2ft) plastic core about 3inches wide that fills with mud and a couple of inches or so of water on top, to get them out you push a plunger in the bottom and extrude the long core of mud from the top. It's pretty cool, but not with solid blocks of ice!).

Well, I go on watch in about 45 minutes, so i'll have my turn with the fun frozen cores......